About Pulsation - How Does it Work?

Pulsation has its roots in the breathing and body work of Wilhelm Reich, and is guided by some of the maps he discovered about the flow of life force energy in the body. Reich's idea was that many psychological problems originated from a disturbance of the natural energetic functional process of charge and discharge that rules the spontaneous emotional release. Every time we block any expressive impulse--for example when we contain our anger, swallow our fear, or tears, or we hide our sexuality--we put into action a powerful blocking system in the body that Reich has called muscular armor.

The largely unconscious effort of blocking feelings and holding energies inside creates tension in the body’s musculature, which in turn prevents a natural expressive flow of energy and feeling. This tension can make us feel emotionally disconnected, psychologically fragmented and energetically divided against ourselves. Using deep breathing and many different techniques to move the body, we loosen the muscular armor, and with that loosening, the inner pressure of unexpressed energies can be released. The relaxation that follows spontaneous emotional release allows us to re-connect with inner wholeness, authenticity of expression, and the silence of Being.

About Pulsation - How Did it Develop?

Wilhelm Reich

The Nineteen thirties and forties

Toward the late 1930s Reich began to treat patients outside the limits of psychoanalysis's restrictions. He first presented the principles of what he called vegetotherapy – which involves the patient physically simulating the effects of certain emotions in the hope of triggering them – in a paper called "Psychic contact and vegetative current" in August 1934. He went on to develop the technique between 1935 and 1940. He began to sit next to his patients, rather than behind them, and would touch them, both to increase awareness of tension and contraction, and to relieve it.

From a psychoanalytic point of view, this undermined the position of neutrality in which the analyst is a blank screen onto which the patient projects his desires, loves, hates, and neuroses. Reich wrote that the psychoanalytic taboos reinforced the neurotic taboos of the patient, and that he wanted his patients to see him as human. He would press hard on their "body armor," his thumb or the palm of his hand pressing on their jaws, necks, chests, backs, or thighs, aiming to dissolve their muscular, and thereby characterological, rigidity. This dissolution of the body armor, he wrote, brought back the repressed memory of the childhood situation that had caused the repression. If the session worked as intended, he wrote that he could see waves of pleasure move through their bodies, a series of spontaneous, involuntary movements. Reich called these the "orgasm reflex."More about Wilhelm Reich >

Charles Kelley

The nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies

In the nineteen fifties Charles R. "Chuck" Kelley immersed himself as a student and experimenter in the Reichian movement. His Reichian writings give accounts of visits with Reich in Orgonon, Rangeley, Maine, experiments with various Reichian equipment and techniques.

After Reich’s tragic death in 1957, Kelley could see no-one continuing the work, so in 1960 he established the Interscience Research Institute, “a scientific and educational organization dedicated to studying the creative process in nature as that process was described by Wilhelm Reich.” During the next five years he published THE CREATIVE PROCESS as a vehicle for his own and others’ research on Reich’s theories and experiments, first in Stanford, Connecticut and later in Santa Monica, California. He had been devastated by the US government’s treatment of Reich and his work; he became disillusioned with the reactions and apathy of many orgonomists, and had been unable to get funding for scientific research. Most importantly, however, he was drifting from Reich on some key theoretical points, especially the origin and value of muscular armor. He dissociated himself from orgonomy and developed his own form of neo-Reichian programs called Radix Education in Feeling, Purpose and Vision Improvement. Despite the multiple names given historically for the life force, he deliberately chose radix, meaning “root” or “cause,” to distinguish his unique theories and practice, and the Institute took its name in 1974. His seminal booklet of 1970, revised in 1974, Education in Feeling and Purpose, remains valid today.More about Charles Kelley >

Aneesha Dillon and Charles Kelley

The nineteen seventies (in Aneesha's own words)"In 1971, at the age of twenty-two, I stumbled upon the writings of Wilhelm Reich. I read his “Selected Writings”, which gave me an overview of his ideas, his extensive research, and his work with people. His clinical work involved psychological/verbal work, which he called Character Analysis, and he also described how, through years of parental and societal conditioning, we are taught to control and repress our feelings, emotions, and our sexuality. We do this by unconsciously tightening our muscles to hold back aliveness, expression, and the flow of life energy in the body. Reich called these tensions muscular armoring and his body techniques, which involved were designed to loosen these tensions.

His methods used breathing, body movement, and active emotional expression of all these energies--fear, anger, pain, and even joy, and love-- in order to become free of repressions. I found his writings, and his unique understanding, so thrilling that I started looking for a place where I could actually experience this work that Reich talked about.

Living in California, I didn’t have to look far—there were many teachers available, in the most up-to-date methods in personal growth. In the Esalen Institute catalogue I noticed there would soon be a lecture by a neo-Reichian psychologist, Charles Kelley, Director of the Interscience Workshop (which later became the Radix Institute). It was everything I’d hoped for, and I immediately signed up for a weekend course. It was a life-changing experience, and after a second weekend I was accepted into his Teacher Training at the Radix Institute and graduated two and a half years later, in 1974.

As Kelley’s first graduated student, I was fortunate to be introduced to Richard Price, the former Director of Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA, and Price invited me to lead programs there, and eventually to become a resident Radix Teacher at Esalen. For me this was a time of immersion into the experimental psychology methods and teachings of the new Human Potential movement which had begun in the sixties. I felt inspired by the many modalities of personal growth which were available at Esalen.

Esalen Institute was a place where psychology and spirituality were beginning to meet, and blend, and influence each other. In the sixties and seventies, there was a palpable ‘breeze’ blowing from the East, in the form of Zen Buddhism, Yoga, T’ai Chi, and many other practices that were being taught at Esalen and in California. This possibility of a spirituality that was not based on Christianity had a tremendous pull on me, and I began to yearn for a deeper understanding of meditation than I could find in Western psychology."

Aneesha and Osho

The nineteen seventies, eighties, nineteens and today (in Aneesha's own words)"One of the teachers I heard about while living at Esalen was a man called Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an enlightened mystic who lived in India. In his ashram, a new kind of meditation was being taught, active meditations which he had created, and which were very different from ‘traditional’ silent sitting meditation. Rajneesh (who many years later came to be known as Osho) taught that in order to live a truly authentic and fulfilling life, it would be important to free oneself of past conditioning and repressions. This could enable people to live in the present moment, unhampered by the chains of the past.

Osho’s Dynamic Meditation, in fact, has many things in common with the neo-Reichian work I was doing with people. It contains phases of breathing, body movement, and emotional expression, and I had the distinct feeling that, if anywhere on the planet there was someone I should learn meditation from, Osho was that person. I only later discovered that Osho had read Reich’s writings (as well as virtually all the contemporary Western books available at that time on psychology, sociology, philosophy, etc.) and that he spoke many times in his discourses about Reich.

Osho recognized that most contemporary people, especially Westerners, were often ‘stuck in their heads’, and before they were really able to go deeper into meditation, they needed some vigorous body movement and emotional expression to shake up and loosen the muscular armoring that Reich had talked about. Muscular tensions prevent awareness from penetrating deeper towards the center. People needed an opportunity to throw out the repressions and the ‘old baggage’ from the past. Only then, in deep relaxation and let-go, would a person be able to rest in their essential core, in the depth and inner presence of Being.

In his Commune Osho created what he called a Multiversity, where he brought together the most up-to-date methods in psychology and the Human Potential movement. He invited a number of his sannyasins (disciples), who had experience working with different psychotherapeutic methods in the West, to work with the Western seekers who were arriving in ever-increasing numbers. The therapy groups that were offered in the Multiversity were part of his program to prepare these seekers for the deeper experiences of meditation. I was both thrilled and humbled when he invited me, a year after I arrived, to be one of his group leaders.

In 1987 I started to call my work Osho Pulsation, and began training people in this method, which is a meeting of the therapeutic work based on the principles developed by Wilhelm Reich, with the body-active meditation methods of Osho. Together, these techniques comprise a unique blend of Eastern and Western influences, resulting in an effective program of personal growth based in work with the body and the bio-energy.

Back in the seventies I was looking for a spiritual Master, and I was fortunate enough to find him. From the time I first went to India to meet Osho in 1976, until 2004 when I moved back to the West, I lived non-stop in his Communes. I’ve spent most of my adult life absorbing his message of meditation and celebration. I continue to do so, and travel around the world sharing the richness I received from Osho, with those who admire and love him."More about Osho >